Doctors remove third leg from child

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Doctors said Monday they removed a third leg from a 21-month-old Honduran girl with a rare congenital abnormality in which a partially formed twin was attached to her.

Tania Trochez was in good condition at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where the 16-hour operation was performed Thursday.

The 20-pound, brown-eyed girl was born with a third extremity located between a normal right leg and a small, nearly normal left leg. The extra leg, which was bent so that it rested on her stomach, contained two shinbones and a double foot that was fused together, doctors said.

A surgical team removed the extremity and reconstructed one of the girl's two bladder outlets. Surgeons also created a bowel outlet and reshaped her buttocks during the 16-hour procedure.

''She's got more work that needs to be done, but this is the major part,'' said Dr. Edwards P. Schwentker, the pediatric orthopedic surgeon who first examined the girl while on a medical mission to the Central American country on behalf of a Christian organization. She will still require surgery for a dislocated hip and a club left foot, Schwentker said.

The odds against conjoined twins being born can be as high as 200,000 to 1, and much higher for incomplete conjoined twins like Tania, he said.

An unknown Honduran doctor in her hometown of San Pedro Sula performed a colostomy immediately after her birth in February 1998 that gave her a chance at survival.

But the government hospital could do nothing for her condition. Schwentker sought to arrange for her to have surgery in the United States after Honduran doctors asked him to examine her.

The girl's teen-age mother, who lived in an impoverished neighborhood of Honduras' second-largest city, signed away her rights to the child shortly after she was born. The child was under the guardianship of a minister in Honduras, said Craig Shagin, a Harrisburg attorney who helped bring the child to the United States.

Margaret Long, a nurse who was with Schwentker during the trip, has cared for Tania in her home for four months before the operation.

''We're hoping she will be adopted in this country. There are people who are very interested in adopting her,'' Long said.